A Different Tale of Three Trees

My goal each year is to get our home decorated for Christmas during Thanksgiving weekend. Since we've been in the trailer the past four years, decorating is at a bare minimum as space is at a premium. Since we are in a season of transition yet again and since we had been sick, recovered and then got sick again, there has been no decorating. Rather than bemoan my lack of decor, I decided that it would be fun to share some old pictures of our old home and Christmas decorations over the years. So, in essence, it's a virtual, virtual tour. I hope you enjoy the pictures of some of our decorations. I know I have enjoyed looking back through them myself. 

I believe I have shared before about our artificial tree, but in case you haven't heard, I will share it again. When I was about 9 my grandmother got an artificial tree. It was huge! It was gorgeous! And I hated it! I loved the smell of a real tree. I loved the look and feel of a real tree. So when I got to my teens and began to work I would always bargain with her and pay for half the tree if she would agree to put up a real tree. Most years that's what we did. 

Here are a couple of pictures of my grandmother's beautiful tree. 

My sister and I opening gifts in 1974 and 1981 

These were the only two I could find on the computer. But you can see that it is a very large, full tree. 

When we had our own home we always bought a real tree. But as our family grew it got tougher and tougher to put out the money for a tree when we would rather spend that money on gifts for our loved ones. One year we had gone out for a super special Black Friday deal, (our first and last time!) And lo and behold, they had an artificial tree on sale for $5.00! A six foot tree for $5.00! My grandmother had passed away a few years earlier or I'm sure she would've had a grand laugh at our tree! As it turned out it stood 6 ft tall, but much of that was the stand and trunk, and it was not very big around. In fact, it was quite a scrawny tree compared to what we were used to. But it was a great buy and so we put it together and set about decorating it with our precious family ornaments. By the time we were done, I could not have loved that tree any more! It became a very special part of Christmas for me. A few years later a friend of my grandmother's gave me another tree, the exact same size and kind of tree, so now we had one for the living room and one for the family room! What a blessing those trees were to me. We would all decorate the family room tree with our country theme and then we would decorate the living room tree in a very elegant burgundy and gold. 

Here is the family room tree. 2003

You might be able to tell we had it set on a small box to give it a little more height, but even without the box you can see that there was a lot of "trunk" to that tree. 

Here is the living room tree with it's burgundy and gold decorations. 

I hope you've enjoyed our tale of three trees. It's funny how very much I have come to love our little trees. After all, it's really not about the tree at all, is it. It's really about the fact that we gather to celebrate the greatest gift of all, the birth of Jesus. And it's about who is gathered around that tree with me to celebrate Him. I often chuckle about how much I hated my grandmother's big, beautiful tree and how much I came to love our little scrawny trees. I know she would have laughed right along with me. And I'm sure she would have ribbed me every year about my lack of "pine tree smell". lol 

This year we will once again not be in our own home for Christmas so I will have to make do with memories of Christmases past. I will enjoy reminiscing here and I hope you will enjoy the trip down memory lane as well. This month I will write a little about some of our traditions as I share our virtual tour. 

Be Blessed,

Colleen

The Waiting Game

So, I've been missing from the web for a bit while we play the waiting game. My mother-in-law was rushed to urgent care awhile back suffering from severe dehydration. Two days later she was in the ER with constant vomiting and severe abdominal pain. It turns out she had a blockage in her small intestine which was the cause of the dehydration. The next day she underwent surgery to clear the blockage and after surgery she was unable to breathe on her own. She has been on a ventilator ever since. She is 83 years old.


I sit here now in the waiting room of the CCCU waiting til after shift change so we can see her again. We wait to hear how her pneumonia is doing. We wait to hear if her blood pressure is regulated. We wait to see if today will be the day she can breathe on her own again. We wait to hear if her white blood count is down, if her blood gases are good, if her fever is under control. Waiting is the toughest part of life. As we wait, we sit with another family who wait for their wife, mother, sister, daughter to heal from an aneurysm, she was rushed into the hospital the same day as my mother-in-law. We all sit and wait. We talk a little, pray a little, try to offer comfort to one another, encouragement to one another. We laugh together, try not to cry in front of each other, sharing our lives in this strange way. Strangers sharing this experience of waiting. We ache with each other, for each other, pray with each other, for each other. We sit in the room together, yet separate, together, yet alone. And we wait. And hope.


Blessings,
Colleen